May 22nd, 2020, A regular domestic flight is scheduled from Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore to Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, Pakistan.
The Plane is an Airbus A 320-214, one of the most technologically advanced in the skies and the world's best selling single-aisle Airliner. The Plane is 15 years old and has logged over 47 thousand flight hours.
At the command is Captain Sujjad Gul, a veteran with over 24 years of Flying experience. and over 4,700 hours in A-320. Next to him is fairly young First officer Usman Azam.
Onboard were 91 passengers, 51 Men, 31 Women, and 9 Children.
Most of them traveling back home to celebrate Eid.
Shortly after 1 pm, the flight 8303 took off from Allama Iqbal International Airport,. and in a matter of minutes, the flight reached it's assigned cruising altitude at 27000 feet.
After a 90 min of Uneventful flight, Captain Gul started preparing his plane for Landing. ATC assigned them the runway 25L
At around 2.30 pm, the plane was 15 nautical miles away from the airport flying at an altitude of 10, 000 feet instead of recommended 7000 feet.
When ATC issued them their first warning, instead of descending, pilots responded by saying that he was satisfied with the approach
around 10 nautical miles from the airport, the plane was at 7000 feet instead of 3000 feet. ATC issued their second warning, pilots again responded that they were comfortable with the approach
ATC asked them again
Considering the altitude situation of PIA 8303, ATC assigned them another runway, but pilots seemed keen on 25 L
The spread of corona-virus had put the country under lock-down for months, shutting all the modes of transports. only Recently govt had allowed for air travel for people to reach their homes in a time of need. Most of the passengers on board were returning home after being stuck in Lahore for weeks, to celebrate Eid with their loved ones
As the plane lowered, passengers could see the familiar scenes, their wait to see their family was over now. A few feet over the ground, pilots flared the plane, lifting the nose up.
Something was wrong. Passengers could hear loud screeching sounds and sparks coming underneath of wings. And then pilots pushed forward throttles to full power as they aborted their landing and decided to go around. The sound of engines at full power was overwhelming rest.
Now, Aborting a landing and going around is a common thing in Aviation so it did not trigger panic in the cabin.
Plane again climbed up to the assigned altitude and given heading to try another attempt at landing.
With that, pilots started to prepare the craft for another attempt at Landing. But their troubles were far from over. The Pilots were struggling to maintain the assigned altitude.
Things started to get worse, They were unable to maintain even 200 feet.
With plane losing altitude, pilots decided to make the go-around shorter and turned left heading directly for the runway.
They had lost both engines.
The deafening silence in the cabin was frighting every passenger.
Tower cleared them for landing.
But the plane was dangerously slow, the plane was stalling.
Finally, at around 2.40, pilots declare an emergency.
Tower clears both runways for them.
But it was too far for them
.
at around 2.42, Pakistan Airlines flight 8303 crashed in model colony, a densely populated residential area, about 1300 m short of Runway 25 L
Out of the souls on board, only two could survive the crash.
of the souls on board, only two could survive the crash.
how can an aircraft, so modern, with a track record of safety, can crash out of the sky, seconds away from touch down.
What went wrong?
Now a formal investigation is under process and we will know the exact reasons for the accident, however, with experience, years to publish official reports.
And our questions can not wait that long, so today, we will analyze whatever data is available with us and try to find out what could be the most probable reason for this horrible accident.
Now, what do we have,
in any air crash investigation, two things play major roles, Debris of the plane and the black box.
The Debris was available at the crash site, and black box, for those who don't know, the black box is a data recorder usually situated in the back of the craft which is built to withstand the crash. The recorder has two units, Flight Data Recorder, and cockpit voice recorder, which as the name suggests, records the data and conversation for the last 45 mins of flight.
Both the records have been extracted safely from the site and have been sent for analysis. it will again take some time for us to get our hands on that information.
Other than that we have, Communications with tower and on seen footage, clicked by bystanders.
SO to start, let us rewind a bit.
During the ILS approach Tower issued several warnings to pilots about their altitude which they conveniently ignored. Now the altitude may not have been a major problem, but with that high altitude, the plane descended faster than normal which contributed to the high speed during descending.
During the descend the craft was supposed to lower the Landing Gear, but the Landing gears were not deployed and Crew had no idea until the very last moment. Now many other Analysts have claimed that pilots were in coordination with the tower about their gear issues.
But we were unable to find any communication about the tower.
Secondly, Belly landing destroys the whole aircraft, and pilots can't take such a huge decision in a matter of minutes. if they knew about gear failure, they would have circled the airport until they could find a solid solution. Calling their Airline, The engineers back in France (airbus), and once all options or exhausted, then only pilots would try for a belly landing.
So it is assumed that the crew only noticed it when they tried touch-down. a warning set off in the cockpit, Even now pilots could have aborted the lading, but they were committed in landing so they tried it anyway. it didn't work.
After the failed landing attempt, pilots pulled up for another attempt, but you see, when they tried that belly landing, they scrubbed off their engines. Since engines are the lowest part of the craft. With the scrubbing, it is believed it must have ruptured oil lines supplying oils to the engines because in a matter of minutes the engines stopped working maybe because of overheating.
The second attempt they had no power. They were struggling to maintain their assigned altitude of 3000 feet, and slowly the speed begins to fell. This time another strange thing happened. The nearby cameras show that in the second attempt the landing gears were locked on positions, how did this happen? will talk about that in a moment.
Now these gears getting deployed was a good thing, right? not entirely.
The plane was already struggling to stay afloat, and now with the gears down, the drag on the craft increased dramatically further slowing down the craft.
The craft could no longer stay afloat and started its journey to the ground and eventually crashed in the Model colony just short of runway 25cL.
Now there are two theories behind the mystery of Gears.
Theory 1 -A theory suggests the airbus has this safety feature where gear would not deploy if the speed exceeds maximum safe speed for gears. Now ee know that the craft was coming in with high speeds higher than the maximum allowed for landing, and the theory suggests that landing gears failed to lock because of the speed. Now once you lower the gear lever, there are indicators to show if the gears are locked in place or not. Three indicators turn green when they're locked in position, but they remained red, and the plane was without it's landing gears.
The pilots missed this because of all the commotion in the cockpit due to the tense approach.
And in the second approach, the theory says that due to lack of power, the craft had gotten slow enough for it to deploy the gears.
The theory fits in perfectly.
The second theory is a little bold.
The unusual approach had both pilots engaged in getting the plane loose altitude and speed at in very short period they could have missed lowering the Landing gear altogether.
Until we get the Cockpit voice recorders, we cant be sure of this and it's very unlikely to happen, but it is a one of possibility.
They realized their mistake and manually lowered the gears in the second attempt.
This theory may make more sense that theory one,
As it can be argued that the craft was slow enough while it was scrubbing the runway that the gears should have started the lowering process, but they did not.
So it can be said that pilots never really lowered their landing gears, and when they realised their mistake, they manually lowered the gears in second attempt.
Again the questions stand, if pilots manually lowered the gears, why would they lower it while being in a stall? they could have lowered them right before the touchdown.
another mystery.
Now we know, it's easy to blame the pilots when they are not around to defend themselves, but again, This is just a theory.
We will get real answers once the investigation is complete.
And more than anyone, we hope the pilots are not at any fault.
With this, we pray for the families of the deceased.
Thank you for reading.
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